The Green Hornet

We got the 2011 Mindless Movie Marathon started on Tuesday by going to see The Green Hornet. It was appropriately mindless. It stars Seth Rogan and Jay Chou, who's new over here but a big star in Asia. Which is good. We need more martial artists over here, so I don't have to scour the internet to find their movies.

The movie starts off with a flashback to 20 years ago. It makes it kind of weird, though, because everyone's dressed like it's 1970. The movie can't be set in 1990, because there's a flash drive integral to the latter parts of the plot. Maybe The Green Hornet's dad just makes everyone at work wear stuff from the 70's. Maybe it was flashback week (A flashback as part of a flashback? Trippy).

Anyway, it goes forward 20 years, to the present day (I presume) and Britt Reid (Rogan) is partying it up. And dancing clumsily, which gives me hope that one day, I too will be able to dance clumsily with hot girls. Except I will probably be neither spoiled nor rich. Anyway, Britt's dad dies, and he gets to be friends with his Dad's mechanic, Kato (Chou). They foil a robbery after desecrating a statue of his father (who's a bit of a dick, but everyone thinks he's great). Soon, the Green Hornet is born, with a nameless sidekick who actually does all the butt-kicking (for Goodness!) while the green hornet gets to say the lines.

There's a jealousy angle worked in that I didn't see coming, but Evan did, so chalk it up to him being smarter, and me being more naive. Whatever. Gang wars erupt over LA, because the Green Hornet is posing as an independent crime contractor, and all the gangs start using him as an example to get out from under the thumb of the bad guy, who’s in charge of all the crime in LA. Really. Can’t rob a bank without his permission. Can't sell drugs. Can’t even jay-walk. The police should just bribe him to keep all the other criminals in line, but movie police are never that smart, unless they’re the protagonists. It all comes to a head in the newspaper building that Reid now owns and runs, with lots of violence and cool gadgets.

There's a car (later, more of them) that has pretty much everything. Missiles, chain guns, flame-throwers, Bullet-proof glass, self-inflating tires, ejector seats, High-caliber machine guns (I think it was a howitzer, but I could be wrong), and a record player. Because Kato likes classical music. And butt-kicking.

This movie was the first one in 3-D I've seen that uses a lot of martial arts. I was a little worried that the eye-focusing would be a problem, but it's not. And I like it. While the choreography is good (if standard), there's a lot of new tricks the camera can do in 3-D now that makes each fight new and interesting. Having blood spatter out towards the camera, or a guy kicked over the hood of the car, away from the screen, is good use of new technology. Thumbs up.

The movie brings the humour too. A lot of it is the awkward humour that's in vogue right now, but I still enjoyed it a lot. Yeah, sometimes the punch lines can be seen from a mile away, but Rogan goes after them so earnestly that it's impossible not to laugh at him. Then he realizes how wrong whatever he said sounded, and it gets even funnier. And they didn't put the funniest parts in the trailer, which I approve.

So it's a theatre movie. Not the best one we've seen, but probably not the worst. It had about the amount of action I expected, but a bit more humour, and I appreciated the humour far more than I expected, so that was good.

I don't really know how to end this, but Cameron Diaz is also in it, and she has aged well. Very well. So that’s good.